


Echoes

by brightly_lit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Teen Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:57:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young Sam and Dean Winchester are taking their first roadtrip on their own together to go look at colleges and hit Vegas along the way, and they couldn't be more excited--until they're attacked by terrifying strangers.  Their assailants?: Sam and Dean Winchester.</p><p>"Parents you could never have, who hadn’t been happy like that in your lifetime, who had died horribly and left you alone in a world you had to try with all your strength to save that just wouldn’t let itself be saved."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

 

 

Sam and Dean were on their first-ever roadtrip that was just the two of them.  Dean couldn’t be more stoked.  Little Sammy was so smart; Dean always figured he would go to college.  Now he was seventeen and ready to go have a look at the one he was most interested in, so Dad said they could go together, just the two of them, as long as they took care of the car.  Dad actually really wanted to be there, too, but they were so excited about having an adventure off by themselves, he relented.

 

They stopped at a gas station along I-70, headed from Lawrence to California to see Stanford.  As they went inside to shop for snacks for Dean, they passed a black, awesomely evil-looking classic car at one of the pumps.  Dean whistled.  “Check that thing out,” he said to Sam, who nodded appreciatively.  “I’ve never seen anything like that before.  That’s cool.”

 

Dean labored over choosing between snacks--he’d just buy them all, but then he wouldn’t be saving any money, and as nice as Dad was about the fact that Dean still lived at home, he knew he was really hoping Dean would finally save up enough from his job to move out on his own.  It was just that dating was kind of expensive, and so were the improvements to his car he liked to make, and he wasn’t making that much at his job at the grocery store.  Maybe if he took the training and learned how to check people out instead of just bagging and collecting carts, he could, but jeez, what a pain in the ass.  He liked collecting carts because he could take his time, hang around outside, shoot the breeze with his high-school friends, and no one would be the wiser ... except when the manager came out and saw him and gave him a hard time.  Still, his job was way better than the other jobs there that paid more.

 

As he was looking at snacks, out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw a guy as tall as Sam come out of the bathrooms.  Dean looked over with a grin, about to quip to the stranger that he was the second-tallest guy he’d ever seen, but the guy had already disappeared somehow, which was kind of weird, because even Dean was taller than the displays, so Sam was towering above them.  Thus, wherever he went in the store, a guy that tall should be visible, right?  Dean followed, peering down the aisle where the guy went, but he wasn’t there.  Well, whatever.  Dean selected his snacks and went to check out, grabbing the juice Sam had chosen out of his hands and setting it on the counter with his stuff.

 

“You don’t have to buy things for me,” Sam said sheepishly.  “Mom gave me money.”

 

“You’re goin’ to college, Sammy.  In four years, you’ll be making five times as much money as me, and then, you buy the snacks.”

 

Sam grinned at him.  “Deal.” 

 

Dean rumpled Sam’s hair as the clerk checked them out.  Sam jumped out of the way, saying, “Hey!” and tried to fix it, but he was laughing.  Seriously, that kid and his hair.  Sam claimed the chicks liked it long.

 

The clerk was staring at them.  Dean noted this and eyed Sam with a smirk.  When he didn’t stop staring, Dean nodded at him.  “How’s it goin’?”

 

“So, are you, like, twins?” the clerk asked.  He seemed really freaked out.

 

“Huh?”  Dean and Sam looked at each other.  Sam had features more like Mom’s but with something closer to Dad’s coloring.  Dean was exactly the opposite.  Most people couldn’t even tell they were brothers.  No one had ever mistaken them for twins before.

 

“We’re just really close,” Sam said with that shy, sweet tone of voice that got him the babes, and grinned at Dean, who grinned back.

 

Dean grabbed their bag of stuff and headed out with a final wave to the freaky clerk.  He was opening his mouth to say something about chicks at Stanford when someone grabbed him by his jacket and dragged him to the side of the gas station, out of view of the highway.  Dean yelled in surprise.  “Shut up!” his assailant hissed, roughly shoving him against the side of the building.

 

“Sammy!” Dean cried, and then he heard Sam’s hysterical breathing and knew they’d gotten him, too.  “What--what’s going on?  You can have our money!”

 

“What are you, huh?  Shifters?”

 

Dean had been wincing away from the violence, but he cracked an eye open now, because ... well, because the voice sounded exactly like Sam’s.  He opened his eyes and looked into Sam’s face.  Sort of Sam’s.  Sam’s if he was older and much more ... evil.  He heard Sam, pressed up against the wall a couple of feet away, say, “Dean?!”  Dean looked over and saw that Sam’s assailant looked just like ... Dean.  What the hell?? 

 

All concern for that left him, however, as his assailant drew a long, shiny knife and held it up to Dean’s throat.  Sam was always the rational one, and now he started trying desperately to reason with them.  “Please!  Please let us go.  You can have anything you want, just please don’t hurt him!  Please ....”

 

“Tell me who you are,” the non-Sam hissed, pressing his arm across Dean’s neck, beginning to choke him.

 

Sam started crying.  “Please!” he wept hysterically.  “Please don’t hurt my brother!”

 

Then someone was there.  Dean only had time to see him press fingers against their attackers’ foreheads, and then the bad guys just ... disappeared.  It didn’t make any sense.  None of it did.  Dean stumbled to Sam’s side and hugged him while he cried.  Dean tried to hold back the tears, himself, but didn’t succeed. 

 

“Are you all right?” their savior asked in a low monotone.  It was some businessman in a suit and a trenchcoat.

 

“Yes,” Dean gasped, clutching the weeping Sammy.  “Thank you, man.  Thanks.  What the--what the hell was that?”

 

“Just some bad men.  I took care of them.  You won’t be seeing them again.”

 

“Thank you,” Dean croaked.  The man walked around the side of the building and was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

 

By evening, the horrifying events of the day had come to seem more like an adventure.  Neither of them had been hurt, after all.  The guy had drawn a knife, but he had only threatened them with it.  The whole thing had lasted thirty seconds, tops.  Dean had a couple of cool bruises to show to the guys when they got home.  It had been just like a movie!  That business guy said nothing like that would ever happen again, and somehow, Dean really felt like he could believe him.

 

Sam was on the phone with Mom, telling her all about it.  “Yeah, but the weird thing is, they looked just like us! ...  Yeah, I know, right?  What the ... what?  The what what?  What silver?  I don’t know, Mom,” Sam said with that patient-teenager tone of voice, “it’s not like I really had time to notice whether they were wearing any silver.  How could I even tell if it was pure silver, anyway?”

 

“I think the knife was silver,” Dean noted helpfully, which Sam relayed to their mom.

 

“Yeah, but they were, like, older than us, and evil!” Sam said excitedly.  He and Dean had been hashing over the details of this all day.  They felt like they’d met their evil twins.  Just like a movie!  “We’re fine, Mom,” Sam said, getting that patient-teenager tone again, rolling his eyes conspiratorially at Dean.  “Well, I swear, they looked exactly like us, only a lot dirtier.”

 

“And their clothes sucked,” Dean added.

 

“Yeah, they looked like they never changed their clothes.”

 

“They kind of smelled like that, too ...,” Dean murmured.

 

Sam sighed irritably, no longer so patient.  “We’re fine, Mom.  No, we’re not coming home!  It’ll be fine, it was just one weird thing.  The guy who saved us said it won’t happen again.  Um, let’s see, like, black hair, blue eyes, trenchcoat.  I dunno.  Well ... you won’t believe me if I tell you.  Okay, but don’t accuse me of lying.  I swear--Dean and I both swear--he put his fingers against their foreheads and they just ... disappeared. ...  Nothing!  He just asked if we were all right, and said they were bad guys and he’d taken care of them, and that was it.  No, I’m sure I can believe him.  I don’t know why, I just ....  Well, anyway, we’re fine.  No, tomorrow night we’ll be in Vegas.  ... Mom!  What kinds of sons do you think we are?!”  He grinned at Dean.  Dean knew exactly what Mom must be saying ... probably about Dean.  “I will,” Sam said, suddenly circumspect, and Dean knew she must be talking about him, likely telling Sam to make sure Dean didn’t gamble all his hard-earned money away.  “I will.  Love you, too.  ’Bye.”  Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes as he hung up.  “Jeez.  Moms.  It’s like, will you get off me and let me live my life?”

 

“She’s just worried.”

 

“I know.”

 

“So,” Dean said, stretching out on the adjacent hotel bed.  A hotel!  They could watch as much t.v. as they wanted!  Maybe even find a little porn ....  He felt guilty even thinking it, especially since Sam had just gotten off the phone with Mom.  “Vegas tomorrow.  Maybe there’ll be more adventures there ....”

 

Sam made a face.  “Hopefully much nicer adventures.”

 

* * *

 

 

 

Mary Winchester did something she hadn’t done in twenty years: she went out to an empty field just outside of town in the middle of the night and cast a spell ... to summon whatever was responsible for the harm that had come to her sons that day.  She already had every weapon laid out beside her that she might need in order to quell or kill it.  She’d also drawn a devil’s trap in the spot where it would appear, and she’d brushed up on her Latin in case she had to cast out a demon.  She was prepared.

 

The bowl flared red as she threw in the final ingredient, and someone appeared before her in the devil’s trap: a black-haired, blue-eyed man in a trenchcoat.  From Sam’s description, the one who had saved her sons.

 

“Who are you?” she demanded.

 

He tilted her head, looking at her compassionately.  “I am Castiel.”

 

“’Castiel’,” she repeated.  “That sounds like the name of an ... angel.”

 

“I am an angel.”

 

She squinted at him mistrustfully.  “Then step out of that devil’s trap.”

 

He did so, without effort, and came as near as she would allow, to regard her by the light of fire still burning in the bowl, as if he was as curious about her as she was about him.  He stared into her eyes.

 

“You saved my sons today.  Why?”

 

He was an angel.  Angels were divine beings.  So why did she feel like he was lying?  “Is it not the job of the angels to protect the innocent?”

 

Mary Winchester was shrewd.  She was a mother, a housewife.  Taking care of her family and her home was her life, but underneath it all, she would always be a hunter, and would never forget the lessons she’d grown up with.  She thought quickly through all she knew, all Sam had told her on the phone, what little Castiel had said.  It wasn’t adding up.  Then she remembered the spell she cast: to summon the creature that was responsible.  “You did this!” she cried.  “Somehow--somehow you’re responsible for what happened to my boys today!  Why?  What did you do?”

 

Again, he was an angel, so why was his glower so dark and chilling?  He paced away for a couple of steps, thinking.  Calculating.  What kind of angel was this?  “The lord works in mysterious ways,” he said finally, and she burst out laughing.

 

“Seriously?  You’re gonna hand me this t.v. evangelist crap?”

 

“It’s true,” he snapped.  “Sometimes ... sometimes things go wrong, and it takes a tremendous amount of effort to set them right again.  Sometimes ... there are unintended consequences to one’s actions.”  He stared at her intently again.

 

“Such as ...?”

 

He stepped up to her.  “Such as you and your family.  You were never meant to exist.  In ... in the correct timeline, you were murdered when Sam was a baby.  Your husband is dead, as well.  But something--something happened.  Someone did something, that had an unintended consequence--”

 

“You,” she said.  She wasn’t going to let him weasel out of responsibility for this.  “You did something.”

 

That glower again.  “Be glad you are alive, Mary Winchester.  Speak of this to no one, or more changes to the timeline will be necessary, and you might not like the result.”

 

She took a step back.  “Are you threatening me?” she asked incredulously. 

 

“I am providing a warning, of biblical proportions.  You have read the bible, have you not?”

 

Mary nodded slightly.  Biblical proportions?  That sounded bad.

 

“Very well.  Go not against the word of the lord, and goodness ....”  He gazed up at the stars, as if pained.  “... Goodness and happiness will follow you all the days of your life, to balance out that which could not come to those who most deserved it.”

 

“Listen, buddy--” she began, insulted by his implications, but he was gone, fluttering away into the night.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Sam and Dean pulled slowly into a spot behind a big minivan where the Impala would be mostly hidden, but from which they would have a good view of their doppelgängers’ homecoming.  Cas had retrieved them from the country road in Provence, France he’d sent them to when they confronted their mini-mes, and explained the situation, something about how when Balthazar unsunk and then resunk the Titanic, an echo had been created, a ten-years-younger Sam and Dean out there, and possibly a twenty-years-younger set, as well.

 

“Just us?” Dean had demanded.  “Or are there other people out there this is happening to?”

 

Cas had seemed reluctant to answer.  “Just you.”

 

“But why?” Sam said.  “That doesn’t make any sense.  We didn’t have anything to do with the Titanic.”

 

“I believe Fate may be ... punishing you for your transgressions.”  He hadn’t been able to look them in the eye while he said it.  “Or more likely, she is punishing me for Balthazar’s rash actions.”  Dean and Sam had looked at each other quizzically.  “Or, most likely, it is nature herself.  Changing the timeline and then changing it back created an echo related to those at the epicenter of events, which, it seems, will repeat every ten or eleven years until the echo has faded from the memory of time.”

 

“Huh?” Dean had said, but Cas wouldn’t say anymore.  So despite Cas urging them to forget about it and go on about their lives as if they’d never had that chance encounter with younger, weaker, lamer versions of themselves, they’d trailed them all the way to Stanford and home, to a nice suburban house in Lawrence.  Neither of them said anything as the young Sam and Dean got out of their crappy convertible, collected tons of crap they didn’t need that they’d hauled around with them that whole time, and headed for their front door.

 

Their mom and dad came out to greet them in the warm early summer evening: younger versions of Sam and Dean’s parents, alive and well and ... happy.  Dean hadn’t seen a smile like that on his dad’s face in ... what, almost thirty years.  Dean knew Sam was feeling what he was feeling.  They didn’t look at each other.  There weren’t any words to describe what it was like to see your parents greet other versions of you--parents you could never have, who hadn’t been happy like that in your lifetime, who had died horribly and left you alone in a world you had to try with all your strength to save that just wouldn’t let itself be saved.

 

The young Sam and Dean described their adventures, acting some of them out, on the front lawn while the neighbors’ sprinklers softly hissed, bathed in pink evening light.  Their dad laughed, sitting down on the front step to listen with delight.  Their mom shook her head, disapproving but amused by some of the young Dean’s more outrageous antics.  The mom’s voice came to them thinly through the open window of the Impala.  Their own mom’s voice.  Dean winced only slightly, but Sam looked down, unable to bear it.  “Well, did you actually see Stanford, or did you lose all your money in Vegas and have to turn around and come home?”

 

“It was awesome!” geeky little Sam exclaimed, and he and young Dean began describing it in detail.  Dean looked over at Sam, staring emptily at the dash, and decided they’d seen enough.  He put the car in gear and eased away from the life they would never have.

 

 

~ The End ~

**Author's Note:**

> \- I have to say, part of what made me want to write this story is that I love the idea of a happy Sam and Dean out there, living the life they should have had.
> 
> \- I've written stories that address the tension I imagine must have existed between Dean and Sam, resulting from the tremendous pressure John put on Dean to look after Sam and all the other pressure that was also on him as the older brother, so for this story, I loved imagining that in the absence of that tension, in a happy home life, they were just best buddies.
> 
> \- I also loved imagining and creating a normal Sam and Dean, who are terrified and don't know how to fight and who cry when someone threatens them, in contrast to the badass Sam and Dean we know and love. And of course I loved casting Sam and Dean themselves as the bad guys in (young) Sam and Dean's lives. (And I love how both sets of Sam and Deans thought the other set was lame, raised with completely different values.) It was really fun exploring the differences, and the similarities, somewhat like in "What Is and What Should Never Be."
> 
> \- I really loved sneaky, shifty Cas in season six, so it was a delight to get to write more of that. (I felt like I didn't get to see enough of that in the series ....)


End file.
